


Leave Your Weakness in a Jar

by prettyasadiagram



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Curses, F/M, Gen, Magic, Near Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 05:24:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyasadiagram/pseuds/prettyasadiagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erica curls her hand around Boyd’s and says in his ear, “Wake the fuck up, Sleeping Beauty.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave Your Weakness in a Jar

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be lighthearted; you know, with Isaac tackling Boyd down a hill and then oops! Magic! Sorry about that.
> 
> Also, it pained me to give Boyd a crappy family life, because in my head canon he's got three younger sisters that have him wrapped around their little fingers and a mom who makes a great blueberry pie, but that's another story. 
> 
> This is set post-Alpha pack and assumes that everyone survived, so I'm pretty sure it's already against canon, but whatever. Immunity before season three starts, I'm calling it.
> 
> Thanks to thatdamneddamne for pointing out inconsistencies with canon. And to think, at one point this girl didn't know how to spell Finstock's name. She's come so far. 
> 
> As always, let me know if I haven't tagged for something or have otherwise made some error.

Boyd falls in the middle of a fight and he doesn't get up. Erica watches him fall, but there's nothing she can do, not with three werewolves and a witch between her and him. That doesn't mean she doesn't try, doesn't lose her mind just a bit, and when she comes back to herself, there's blood in her hair and something slick in her teeth, but her hands are firm on Boyd's chest, so at least there's that.

When everything is silent, Derek pulls her away, says tersely, "He's still breathing," before hoisting Boyd over one shoulder and striding back toward the house. He leaves Erica there, kneeling on the ground, pants soaking in dew and blood, and she looks up to see the moon, cold and distant and unfeeling, and she howls her pain.

 

(Boyd feels a tug in his chest and looks down, expecting to see the slow bloom of blood spreading under his jacket, but he feels whole and his grey shirt is still grey, only flecked with blood instead of drowning in it. The witch he’d been fighting looks surprised, and that alone makes Boyd more anxious than if he’d been actually bleeding. At least if there was blood he could heal. He thinks about the stories Peter has been telling, about witches and slow curses and rotting from the inside out. He’s pretty sure that that isn’t how he wants to die, but then he’s falling to the ground and it doesn’t matter anymore.)

 

The Alpha Pack came and went, but apparently, word was out. The pack of Beacon Hills had passed, but not with honors. There was no stamp of approval to keep them safe. They still had to prove themselves, and the only way was with blood.

Erica tries not to think about how comfortable she is with throwing a punch and with using her claws for more than opening letters, but between defending herself and bleeding out in an abandoned warehouse, Erica will choose life every time.

 

Boyd lies sprawled on the couch, dumped there gracelessly by Derek. Erica watches him from the other armchair, chewing on her fingernail as she waits for him to wake up. He doesn’t smell hurt, doesn’t smell like blood or pain, only like sweat and exhaustion and other people’s blood.

She hears Stiles talking in the kitchen while Derek bandages him up. He calls his cuts “war wounds” and “badges of honor,” and it’s all Erica can do not to go in there and shake him, because Boyd still isn’t waking up. She doesn’t care about their awkward flirting the way she usually would. She doesn’t go and make knowing eyes at Stiles over Derek’s shoulder because it’s been thirty minutes and something is wrong. It has to be wrong or Boyd would have woken up by now. He would have stretched and groaned and said nothing about lingering pain, just looked for her in the room and relaxed.

When it’s been another ten minutes, she pads over to the couch and kneels by Boyd’s head. In an ideal world, kissing Boyd would wake him. In a perfect world, none of this would have happened, but she would settle for this: she would press her lips to his for a terrifying _one Mississippi—two Mississippi—three Mississippi_ , and then he’d kiss her back, inhaling sharply and pulling her closer with one broad hand. But if she does it now and he doesn’t respond.... Erica doesn’t know if she could handle not knowing if it was because she isn’t the one, or if the world just doesn’t work that way, not for them.

She kisses Boyd on the forehead and doesn’t say anything, not when there are three other werewolves in the house and if she opens her mouth she’ll probably break. Blinking back tears, Erica steadies herself and then strides into the kitchen to mock Stiles and Derek and their failboat flirting, anything to keep her mind off of Boyd.

 

Derek sends her home at eleven, hands over her cell phone with thirteen missed calls, all from her parents, and says there’s nothing she can do now, they can all only wait. He promises to call Deaton in the morning and Erica struggles not to scoff, because she’s pretty sure that won’t solve anything.

Isaac texts Boyd’s parents, says he’s staying over for a night of Call of Duty and pizza pockets, and Erica can’t bring herself to tell them that Boyd’s parents won’t care, that the only people who’d notice his absence are right here.

She wonders what her own parents will say when they see her, mud on her boots and dirt in her hair, as she comes in with her head down and shoulders hunched. If they’ll be angry that she made them worry and stay up late or if they’ll be secretly pleased because they assume she has friends to keep her out late. It’s still too soon for them to ask if it was a boy, but she wants them to. She wants to blush and lie and duck her head, knowing her mom is hiding a grin because _finally_. She wants Boyd to pick her up from her house, to ring the doorbell and shuffle his feet when her dad stares him down. She wants Boyd to wake up. 

Stiles offers her a ride home, says if they’re fast he can drop her off and still probably beat his dad home. She pauses by the couch and kisses Boyd’s clasped hands. There’s something about his stillness, the way his mouth has fallen open gently that makes Erica decide she doesn’t give a fuck what Isaac or Derek or Peter thinks, so she leans down and whispers, “Wake up; you promised you wouldn’t leave me,” and walks out of the room without looking back.

 

(Boyd dreams. He dreams that Derek never came to him and he finished high school friendless and alone, wondering why some people get to change and grow into themselves, why Erica learned to bolster herself with red lipstick and leather and he stayed behind, watching from the sidelines, slipping others the keys to the ice rink for their late night plans that never included him.

He howls and the dream changes.)

 

School feels like just another day, and it makes Erica go a little crazy inside, because people are talking about the bodies found ripped apart in the Preserve and how the mountain lions are growing bold, but no one is saying anything about Boyd’s absence. No one questions the empty chair in the back of second period U.S. History or asks where he is in gym.

Erica wonders what it means that after Derek bit her she came to school with the heels she’d hidden in the back of her closet and the skirt she’d hungered over for years, but Boyd stayed the same. He didn’t show up and muscle his way onto the varsity team; he knew who he was without the bite, and with it he was just a little bit _more_.

She doesn’t know how to feel like that—comfortable in your own skin. When Derek found her in the hospital that night, he offered her power and strength and promised her she'd never have to go back. He didn't say anything about killer lizards and deranged wolves, but Erica isn’t sure she would have said anything either if she were in his shoes.

Sometimes, when she can’t sleep because she can hear every creak of her house and the steady beating of her parents’ hearts, Erica think about what Derek might have said to Boyd that made him accept the bite.

Erica tried to ask Boyd once, got as far as a deep breath and said, “Hey I never asked—” before she chanced a glance at Boyd and saw how his shoulders had tensed, and she wondered what he thought she was going to ask. It occurred to her that maybe Boyd didn’t want to share. Not yet, at least.

Let him keep his secrets. She has her own to guard.

 

(Boyd dreams that Gerard never died and that he’s still in the woods with an arrow in his shoulder. Erica is on the ground and he can hear the catch in her voice when she tells him to run, but Boyd knows he could never leave her. Boyd knows how this turned out. He remembers waking up to electricity and Erica’s scared face, but all the same, here and now he’s running away. He hears the crack of Erica’s neck behind him, the rev of an ATV engine chasing him down like a dog, and even though he knows this never happened, it wears away at him that some part of him ever thought about leaving Erica behind.

Boyd dreams that he left her to die and it hurts. He howls and the dream changes.)

 

When Stiles finds her after school and says, “Hey, Catwoman, come to Deaton’s with me? Maybe he’s got some answers,” Erica climbs into his jeep without protest. Stiles talks all the way to Deaton’s and doesn’t push when she just stares out the window. There’s nothing really she can say. 

He pulls into the parking lot of the clinic and idles for a second before turning to face her. “I know Derek doesn’t trust Deaton, but he’s not a bad guy. Cryptic, yes. Often infuriating, check. But he knows his stuff, so—trust me, at least, if you can’t trust him.”

Erica can feel Derek on the edge of her senses. He’s probably skulking in the woods behind the clinic, just within hearing range. She wonders if Derek trusts Stiles yet, or if he’s still lying to himself about that one, too.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Stiles—I’ve always trusted you,” she says, and then pulls the keys from the engine, ignoring Stiles’s squawk of outrage, before hopping out of the Jeep. “Now let’s go, Batman. I’d like some answers before the next full moon.”

 

Deaton is less than helpful, and Erica swallows down the urge to growl. Unlike Derek, she’s at least learned that violence doesn’t work on Deaton.

“What, no true love’s kiss?” Stiles questions with forced cheer, after Deaton’s told them he has no idea how to end the curse, a least not without seeing Boyd in person. 

Deaton raises an eyebrow. “Sorry, Mr. Stilinski, this isn’t _Once Upon A Time_.” 

Erica doesn’t let herself crumble, keeps her eyes dry and her hands steady, doesn’t let them know that she’d been hoping for something just that simple. “Will you come by the house then?”

He nods, “I’ll set something up with Derek,” before he politely shows them to the door.

Back in the Jeep, Stiles sighs heavily and when he opens his mouth to apologize or say something soothing or consoling, Erica stares straight ahead and says, “Take me home, Stiles.”

 

When she gets home and remembers that it’s Thursday, Erica is so relieved she could cry. She lets herself slump against her door for a second and take in a deep, shuddering breath before locking it all back up. It’s Thursday. It’s family dinner night; it’s kind of a big deal in the Reyes family; and it’s hopefully enough to keep Erica’s mind off Boyd.

Thursday nights are sacred, and so she still shows up every week, even when every other night she’s out with Isaac or Boyd, and she’s silently grateful that some things didn’t change when she did. Her mom worries, Erica isn’t deaf to the late night conversations about how she’s changed, but she still squeezes Erica’s arm when she rounds the corner to the kitchen, like she used to, and that is that.

Last week at lunch, before Boyd got himself injured, Erica had looked up from teasing Stiles and had seen Boyd leaning toward Isaac, his head cocked in interest and a faint smile on his mouth, and Erica wanted to see Boyd at her kitchen table, wanted him next to her at Thursday night dinners. She wanted his big hands dwarfing their pale ceramic cups, his eyes bright while her dad harassed him about playing lacrosse and what his brackets looked like for March Madness. Erica thought Boyd would fit in with her family, but she was too chicken to ask him then. When he wakes up, she’ll ask. She’s pretty sure he’ll say yes.

Despite her attempts to focus, to stay in the moment, dinner feels awkward. Erica tunes out questions and picks at her food, her mind back on Boyd at Derek’s, wondering if anything has changed. Her heart feels like a pound of steel, heavy in her chest, and when her mom asks if everything is ok, it takes Erica a second to swallow down the urge to cry into her mother’s shoulder and tell her everything. 

 

She heads over to Derek’s after her parents have gone to bed, with a promise in the form of a text from Derek that Deaton is coming over at eleven. 

 

There’s something heavy in the air when she gets there. The house smells like herbs and static electricity and oddly metallic, and Derek is winding himself up in the corner, claws flexing and eyebrows furrowing together as he watches Deaton prod and poke at Boyd. 

But in the end, Deaton comes and goes from the house, his mouth barely curving into a frown, leaving them with only the promise that he’ll keep looking into things. Derek growls once he’s gone and throws a cup at the wall. Isaac says nothing, pale-faced and still. Erica curls her hand around Boyd’s and says in his ear, “Wake the fuck up, Sleeping Beauty.”

 

The full moon rises the next night, and Boyd still doesn’t wake. Erica feels the moon pulling at her bones and wonders how Boyd doesn’t shift even a little, even as unconscious as he is. She hangs in the doorway and watches him sleep, ignores Derek’s call and his impatience and his worry, because the idea of running without Boyd makes her feel cold.

 

(Boyd dreams that he’s somewhere else, some other time, and he’s weighed down with metal, a sword in his hand. He can’t find Erica or Isaac or Derek, but the sense of family is there, buried and strained, and he knows he’ll find them somehow.

There’s some pale slip of a woman he doesn’t recognize in front of him, bow and arrow in her hand, and he’s pretty sure he’s supposed to protect her, so he does his best and when his heart is ripped out, he howls. And the dream changes.)

 

Erica spends the weekend at Derek’s and helps Stiles overrun the kitchen with Peter’s library, looking for something, anything, that will shed some light, because Deaton has nothing, and Derek has nothing, and Erica is losing her mind. 

When she nods off in the middle of reading a book about rituals relating to the new moon, it’s late afternoon, the vanillin smell of books and Stiles’s constant low muttering sending her to sleep, and Erica dreams.

She dreams of warm skin and a wolf grin, of tall trees and the feeling of not being alone. She wakes with her heart pounding and her hands feeling cold, empty.

From her slump on the table, Erica can see through the open doorway to Boyd spread out on the couch, chest moving slowly, and she thinks she remembers seeing him between the trees, running fast enough to stay out of reach but slow enough to laugh at her. 

Stiles slams a book shut and huffs, “Fuck, this is beyond useless,” and Erica doesn’t say anything, because she’s thinking about how she almost kissed Boyd that first night and while he wouldn’t have laughed out loud, she thinks he would have smiled just a bit and pulled her in.

“You haven’t kissed him yet, have you?” Stiles says softly. “Not since he, you know, fell asleep.”

Erica doesn’t take her eyes off Boyd as she shakes her head. “What if I do and he doesn’t wake up? What then?”

“Then we’d know that this isn’t a ‘true love’s kiss’ kind of curse, because Erica, the way he looks at you...”

For a moment, Erica thinks about rounding on Stiles and asking him what he thinks he knows when he can’t even see that Derek would sell his Camaro if he thought it would make Stiles happy. She swallows it all down and goes with a careful, “Does he really?” because Erica may be a bit cruel and a bit brash, and she may sharpen her claws on Stiles, but playing on his emotions is a line she’s not willing to cross anymore.

He nods solemnly, “Like you hung the moon,” and then he smiles, gives her a little shove. “Go kiss him, Erica. I’ll even set the mood for you,” he says, already starting to hum “Kiss the Girl.” 

Erica feels ridiculous walking over to Boyd, and she doesn’t feel better when Stiles finally stops humming in the background, because now all she can hear is the pounding of her heart and the steady beat of Boyd’s. Ignoring Derek in the garage and Isaac upstairs is difficult, it makes her tense and uneasy to be so vulnerable; the instincts of years of hiding are hard to erase, but she wants this to work so badly. Wants Boyd to open his eyes and smile, wants him to kiss her back, wants him to say yes to Thursday night dinners and maybe yes to forever, but she’d settle for dinner and a movie.

She closes her eyes and kisses him, a dry press of lips for _one Mississppi—two Mississ_ —and then there’s a hand warm and solid on the back of her neck, another low across her waist, pulling her off balance to sprawl across Boyd’s chest. Stiles whoops in the background and Erica grins into the kiss, not pulling away even when she feels Derek and Isaac rush into the room. 

And when Boyd pulls back and smiles, says, “Took you long enough,” Erica doesn’t even try to stop the laughter from bubbling out because for once things have gone her way.

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not repost this work in its entirety or share this work on third-party websites such as Goodreads.


End file.
